Tough Cookie

On the upside, I told jokes on-screen and mixed cream into smashed garlicky potatoes. I chatted about the rejuvenating properties of toasted, crunchy almonds while folding melted butter into almond cake batter. I gushed about the trials and joys of learning to ski as I chopped mountains of Godiva Bittersweet Chocolate. I swore to my viewers that my recipe made the darkest, most sinfully fudgy cookies on the slopes. I even assiduously followed Arthur’s tasting instructions: Take a bite. Moan. Move your hips and roll your eyes. Say M-m-mm, aaah, oooh! Yes! Yes! Watching the footage, Tom had quipped that the program should be called The Food-Sex Show.

All in all, the first four weeks of taping went well. By Week Four, though, my personal-chef business still had not taken off. I only had one upcoming job. Arthur Wakefield himself had offered me a gig the following week: preparing food for a holiday in-home wine-tasting. Arthur supplemented his floor director income by working as a wine importer. He needed to showcase some new wines—and serve a gourmet meal—to high-end customers and retailers. So, even in the personal-chef department, things were looking up.

Unfortunately, in Week Five, Cooking at the Top! hit a snag, one occasioned by a predictable Colorado crisis: blizzard.

“Don’t get hysterical on me, Goldy!” Arthur wailed into the telephone December the sixteenth, the night before we were due to tape the fifth episode. I held the receiver away from my ear and pictured him: Short, slender, with a handsome face and a head covered with wiry black hair, Arthur was single and, with the income from two jobs, well-off. Unfortunately, no matter whether he was fretting about the show or his precious wines, he wore an air of gloom. Sporting a band-collared black shirt, black pants, and brown rubber-soled shoes, he strode everywhere hunched forward with apprehension. That guy is stuck in a Doppler shift, my son—currently studying ninth-grade physics—had commented. As Arthur quacked into the receiver that night, I imagined him tipping forward precipitously, straining to peer glumly out his condo window, anxiously assessing the thickening wash of snow.

Without taking time to say hello, he’d launched into his late-night communication with a grim update on the severe winter storm bearing down on us. The weather service was predicting four feet of white stuff. Nevertheless—Arthur tensely informed me—despite problems with transportation and prepping, Front Range PBS had to shoot the show the next morning. I told him that it would take me an hour just to ready the ingredients on the menu. Arthur didn’t want to hear it.

“Then leave an hour early so you can deal with the roads!” he snarled. So much for sympathy.

I gripped the phone and glanced out the bay window Tom had installed during our remodeling. An old-fashioned street lamp illuminated fast-falling flakes swirling from a black sky. In the living room, wind whistled ominously down our fireplace flue. I sighed.

“Sorry I snapped,” Arthur moaned. “I’ve got a blizzard and a crew in revolt. Plus, my boss says our show has to raise money. The annual fund-raiser got canceled, so we’re up.” He moaned again, pitifully. I registered the clink of a bottle tapping glass. “One of our PBS people was killed a while back. This fund-raiser is a memorial for him. We have to do it.”

I sighed and murmured a few consoling words. I didn’t ask why it would be a good idea for us to risk our lives remembering someone who was already dead.

“Killdeer’s been dumped big time,” Arthur reported dourly. “We’ve already got thirty-five inches of new snow. I couldn’t open my door this morning.” He stopped to drink something. “Are you getting any?”

In Colorado, this meant snow, not sex. “About a foot today,” I replied. Our mountain town lay forty-five miles east of the Continental Divide and forty miles west of Denver. Five to six feet of snow over the course of a six-month winter was normal. This was much less than the snowfall registered in Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge, and Killdeer—all ski resorts west of the Divide.

Arthur groaned. “The snowboarders and skiers? They’re ecstatic! They’ve got an eighty-inch base in December! How’m I supposed to get our van up a road covered with seven feet of white stuff? My crew’s having a late-night drinking party, like a farewell before our broadcast.” I heard him take another slug of what I assumed was wine. “Know what that crew’s thinking, Goldy? I’ll tell you. They’re thinking Donner Pass.”

Tucking the receiver under my ear, I started heating some milk: It was definitely a night for hot chocolate. “Arthur,” I answered calmly, “why does the show have to be live? Why don’t you just postpone the taping?” I adjusted the flame under the milk. “Better yet, why not tell me exactly what’s going on?”